Love is for Children
by guineapiggie
Summary: Sansa Stark has been a prisoner of the Lannisters for almost half a year, when Cersei decides it is time to put her to use. A loyal subject of hers offers to see to that... [AU, one-shot]
**Love is for children**

 **DISCLAIMER:** I don't own a thing.

 ** _*A/N*_** This is a one-shot.  
The promt for this is from tumblr, where there was a whole elaborate pitch for a fic - Petyr is an assassin working for the Lannisters, Sansa is his protegé but wants out; Petyr gets into an accident and loses his memory and Sansa runs from the Lannisters, but decides to take him with her.

I started writing this, then ran out of ideas. Same old story, you know... but I figured this actually works as an open-end one-shot, so here it is :)

Hope you'll enjoy it!

* * *

Inspired by the following dialogue from The Avengers:  
-"Is that love, Agent Romanoff?"  
-"Love is for children. I owe him a debt."

* * *

The key creaked in the old lock and Sansa frowned. It was too early for a meal, wasn't it, it wasn't even dark yet-

Suddenly, she was awfully scared. What would they do to her? There wasn't a point in getting her out of her cell, unless they needed her for something. Maybe Joffrey got bored and wanted-

She bit back a sob and pushed the thought away. It wouldn't exactly help if they found her crying; Cersei always said she was weak and stupid anyway.

Maybe they would execute her, like they had her father and, if the rumours were true, her mother and brother as well…

Sansa squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath, trying to steady herself.

"Good evening, little dove."

Her eyelids fluttered open again and she got to her feet hastily, looking up at the Lannister matriarch. She chose not to reply – no matter what she said, Cersei never liked it.

"Someone's been asking for you, Sansa," Cersei said in her usual soft, fake voice; managing to make even that sound threatening. "Maybe you should tidy yourself up a bit, make sure you look pretty for your visitor, don't you think?"

"Who…?" Sansa asked tentatively, but Cersei just smiled.

"Oh, you'll see, my dear."

The door fell shut after her before Sansa could muster a reply. With a dreadful sinking feeling in her stomach, she sat down on her bed and stared at the wall opposite.

What did Cersei mean, someone had been asking for her? Why would she have to make herself pretty for her visitor, unless…

She shivered and tried to wipe those thoughts away, but they wouldn't go. She felt sick.

No, if it was about Joffrey, Cersei wouldn't have announced him like that. He would have come barging into the cell without even knocking, rude and gruff as always…

But who else could it be? It couldn't be a relative, could it, there was only her uncle Edmure, and God knew if he was still alive at all, and her aunt Lysa, who hadn't left her home for the last three years. Nobody knew where her little sister Arya was and if she was even still alive; and even if she or her half-brother Jon would come to try and get her out, Cersei would have them shot on the spot.

Who could it be?

With lethargic movements, she got to her feet and brushed her hair for what felt like hours, splashed a handful of cold water into her face and changed into some new clothes, more to have something to do than because it was necessary, and then she started pacing in front of the door, waiting to hear steps, voices, the clanking of a key.

It was a painfully familiar pastime for Sansa, she had developed all the characteristics of a caged animal, no matter how much she had tried to prevent becoming like this.

It was perhaps ten minutes later, even though it felt like several years to her, that she heard steps approaching the door. Two people – Sansa had learned to tell.

One pair of steps were Cersei's, she wore heels, not high, but they did make a very distinct noise on the concrete floor. The others were quieter; quick, light steps that she had never heard before.

She quickly backed away from the door, sat down, then got to her feet again.

"… trying to play the hero and get Catelyn's little girl out of here, I will kill you both."

"Really, and who would you send after _me_?" a man's voice gave back, quiet, a little husky and with a distinct trace of mockery.

"You're not immortal either, Littlefinger." Cersei sounded annoyed.

"I know. And given the weekly death threats your dear son likes to send my way, I thought I could do with a successor. You know, to avenge my death." The sarcasm in his voice was growing heavier with every syllable. "If I go down, let there be fire."

"Do not speak of my son like that," Cersei hissed and Sansa almost smiled. It was reckless, but _God,_ how often had she wished to say much worse about Joffrey? Whoever that man was, he was either suicidal or very powerful; but he had nerve.

The lock gave its usual creak, then the door was pushed open. Sansa felt paralysed.

The man next to Cersei was rather short, but slender, around Cersei's age if she'd had to guess, even though his dark hair was already greying around the temples. Despite his formal attire, Sansa couldn't say what he did for a living. Somehow, he didn't look like a banker to her.

A faint smile twitched around his lips, but Sansa had the feeling it didn't quite reach his eyes.

"Little dove, this is Petyr Baelish. He offered to help you make yourself useful. Isn't that nice of him?"

Sansa felt the usual diffuse surge of anger at the sound of Cersei's voice. For Heaven's sake, she was seventeen, why did that woman have to talk to her as if she was a baby?

Baelish stepped into her cell, that genial, strange smile still playing around his lips. "Hello Sansa." His bright eyes wandered over her face. She felt naked under his gaze, vulnerable and oddly cold.

"I heard you were good at school."

"I haven't been for almost a year," Sansa murmured, trying to avoid his eyes.

"That doesn't matter," he replied in his gentle voice, still looking at her, and stepped even closer. Sansa fought the urge to back away from him. "You're smart, that's all we need." He caught a wisp of her hair between his fingers and smiled. It looked a little more genuine this time, but somehow bitter. "Oh, with a face like yours, you'll be just perfect, my dear."

His gentle, husky voice made her shiver. The impulse to take a step back was overwhelming.

"Sansa, Baelish offered to train you. Then you'd have a job. You could work for me, little dove, how would you like that?"

Sansa glanced at the strange man who was still watching her intently and asked, her voice a little shaky: "What kind of job?"

"Does it matter?" Baelish asked, so very softly that Cersei could probably not understand it. "It would get you out of this cell, sweetling."

 _Well, that is a very valid argument,_ Sansa thought. She had been stuck in this cell for almost _six whole months_ , with no other perspective to leave it than ending up shot like her father.

Baelish's sharp grey eyes seemed to look right through her and he smiled, very faintly, almost conspiring. Sansa would have probably fallen for it – if he hadn't stood so unbearably close to her, close enough for her to see that he only had a couple of inches on her; close like he was going to kiss her.

He seemed to enjoy it, too. Something told her that he knew exactly how the panic was suffocating her more and more the closer he got.

She felt the driving desire to push him away; to at least tear her gaze from his cold eyes, but he wouldn't let her. The fear had her now, well and truly. She was certain he wanted to hurt her, in some twisted, drawn-out way… Joffrey would have hit her and been done with it, but this man struck her as a different kind of monster.

Yet whoever he was, whatever he wanted from her, whatever he was capable of – he could hardly be worse than the Lannisters. Than being locked up in this cursed cell, staring out at the places where she had taken walks with her father, waiting for someone to come and hurt her because they were bored. Anyone, _anything_ was better than what she had now, wasn't it?

"Okay," she breathed after a moment, nodding faintly. "Okay."

Cersei threw Baelish a hard look and nodded. "Alright, Littlefinger. If she runs away, I'll hold you responsible." She threw Sansa a glance full of badly concealed contempt and said coolly: "Try to keep up, Sansa, who knows, maybe you will actually be of use then."

Sansa returned her glare and replied, against her better judgement: "Yeah, maybe I will."

Again, a look of disdainful amusement flickered over Baelish's face for the fraction of a second, then he turned to smile at Cersei. "Don't worry, I'll put her to use." He cast a glance around her minuscule cell, so small that with him and her inside it there was almost no space left, and added, still smiling: "Well, I'd tell you to pack, but…"

Sansa forced herself to laugh – he struck her as the kind of person that wanted people to laugh at his jokes, and she had better be nice to this man, whoever he was.

"Yeah, I don't… I don't have much," she muttered and stared at her shoes. That was, in fact, a monstrous understatement. She had a bunch of clothes - they were neither cheap nor badly fitted, but they were all the same. Several sets of the same skirt, the same pullovers, the same shirts, two perfectly identical pairs of jeans and two pairs of shoes.

Apart from that she owned a stack of dreadfully boring lifestyle magazines that she had practically learned by heart out of boredom, and a hairbrush.

Baelish smiled at her. "Don't worry, we'll get something for you," he said lightly and walked away with swift steps, not sparing Cersei so much as another glance.

Sansa stood rooted to the spot for a moment, staring at Cersei and feeling as if she would be struck by lightning the moment she crossed the threshold, but the tall blonde had turned to leave as well and the door was still open. Tentatively, Sansa edged closer; her heart was racing and her breathing was going shallow. In her dreams, she had left her cell innumerable times, running out of the door and towards freedom, but now she felt like she couldn't. Her world had shrunken around her those past months, grown smaller and smaller and smaller until its borders and the white walls had become one. Suddenly, she was scared of leaving, feeling like everything would end if she walked through that door-

But that was silly. Walking out that door was the only chance she had to _live,_ and if she didn't even have the strength to leave, she might as well have died on the spot.

So she took a deep breath, scraped together what bravery she had left and stumbled over the threshold, almost jumping. Outside, she froze for a second, waiting even though she didn't really know what for. The end of the world, perhaps.

Nothing happened, though, literally _nothing,_ and that left her with a horrible foreboding feeling.

Still feeling more than shaky, she shook her head to get rid of those thoughts and hurried down the corridor the way Baelish had disappeared.

He cast a look at her across his shoulder when she finally caught up with him, feeling dizzy and breathless. "You have to keep up with me, Sansa," he said quietly, his voice level. "That's important. What I'm about to teach you is dangerous and there is no staying behind. The moment you do, there is nothing I can do for you anymore."

His cryptic announcement did nothing to clear her head, but it didn't really scare her, either. Right now, she felt like she was sleepwalking – nothing anyone could say or do could have reached her in this moment. So she just nodded.

Baelish dug a key out of his pocket and stepped out of the door into the fading sunlight. Again, Sansa hesitated, just for a second this time, though. _Keep up with me._

The faint warmth of the fading sun hit her unexpectedly and she felt ready to burst with a sudden dizzy happiness – she had thought she would never feel the sun on her skin again. Then she became aware of the stupid grin on her face and hastily wiped it off before he could see.

Baelish reached a black car parked down the street, plain at first sight, but expensive. Her father had once had one like that.

"D'you know how to drive?" he asked, opening the driver's door.

Sansa shook her head and opened her mouth to mutter some meaningless apology, but he just smiled his bizarrely fake smile and said:

"Good, then we'll have something to start with. Go on, get in."

Reluctantly, she opened the heavy door and slipped onto the passenger seat. The interior of the car was all black and chrome, and it all looked perfectly new; there wasn't the slightest touch of dust to be found on the polished surfaces. The motor sprang to life with a low growling. Sansa shrank into the seat and stared out of the window for a while, only to realise that she had little to no recognition of the buildings they passed by. It took a lot of self-restraint not to look at Baelish. After a while, she caved in and cast him what she hoped to be a stealthy sideward glance. His slender fingers rested lightly on the steering wheel, his grey-green eyes fixed the road ahead. He looked completely at ease, she thought angrily, while Sansa felt more uncomfortable with every second that dragged by in the painfully silent car.

She sat stiffly in the huge seat, but the black leather was so incredibly soft that she felt almost tempted to relax for a moment.

"When's your birthday?"

Sansa frowned at that bizarre, sudden question. "In four months and two days," she replied slowly after a moment, desperately trying to figure out what the hell he was playing at. Why would he care if she was of age? Unless of course... but no, she thought and supressed a shudder. She didn't have to be eighteen for that.

Baelish smiled his odd smile, never taking his eyes off the road. "That should do, I guess."

"For what?" she inquired, equal parts confused and anxious.

"For your training."

Sansa bit her lip and stared out of the window, then asked reluctantly: "What… what are you going to teach me, Mr Baelish?"

Still that smile. "All in good time, sweetling. Firstly, we'll need to get you away from them, don't you think? You'll sleep like a log in a bed that isn't theirs."

 _In your bed?_ Sansa thought darkly and cast her eyes down.

"No need to look so scared, Sansa," he said, a touch of mock in his voice. "Believe me, you're better off with me. At least for now."

Sansa bit back a cold laugh and fixed her eyes on the road instead, trying not to think of the horrors that might yet lie ahead of her.

Petyr Baelish's flat was a lot like his car, Sansa thought as she stepped through the door.

It was located in a perfectly mediocre street, nothing grand or especially expensive, though fairly close to the city centre. When he led her up the stairs (apparently there was no elevator) with brisk steps, she almost failed to keep up with him – she hadn't exactly had a lot of exercise in her cell, and Baelish lived on the third floor. But she doubted he even noticed because he didn't turn around once, never even slowed down.

The door they reached was as plain and slightly run-down as the stairwell; the black paint was peeling off the wood in places. Baelish fished the key out of his pocket and opened, beckoning her through with a mock little bow. "Ladies first."

Unlike the stairwell, the flat looked new, and a lot bigger than she'd thought. Smooth, dark wood covered the floor, the doors and the window frames were of the same material. The little foyer opened into a spacious room that seemed to serve as living room, kitchen and dining room alike. There was a door to her left and one to her right, two more led away from the far wall. Just like the car (and his suit, she realised), it looked stylish and expensive, but it was reduced to a minimum; there were no decorations anywhere. No pictures, no little statues or pot plants, just a handful of sophisticated lamps and candles that had never been lit.

It looked like something someone might have cut out from a furniture catalogue, she thought, beautiful and completely anonymous. She frowned and wondered what a life this man was leading – it seemed dreadfully sad to her.

Baelish closed the door behind them and hung up his jacket in the wardrobe in the foyer, storing his briefcase in a drawer. Sansa stood in the middle of the big room, uncertain what to do next, fingering the hem of her pullover.

"Are you hungry?"

Sansa hadn't eaten for hours, but she still shook her head. She felt far too anxious to eat, her stomach was clenched. God beware that she threw up all over the floor…

"Alright then." He was still smiling his genial smile. "Feel free to use the kitchen if you change your mind. Be careful with the stove, though, it works with gas. My study," he pointed at the door near the entrance, "my bedroom, bathroom," he pushed the last door open and stepped inside, "your room."

She tentatively followed him. The room wasn't big, but still at least twice as big as her cell at the Lannisters. There was the same smooth parquet, the same fluffy carpet, the same plain white walls. The bed clothes were fine grey linen, the expensive French one at a guess. Her mother had loved that fabric.

There was also a desk with a stack of books, a bottle of water and a glass. Baelish opened the wardrobe and Sansa frowned when she saw the stacks of clothes on the shelves; cosmetic, towels, shoes and underwear that was very clearly _not_ made for men.

"You should find everything you need, if there's anything missing, just tell me."

For a moment, she was stunned silent, then she stammered, just to break her dumb silence: "Okay. I'll just need a few minutes, then we can-"

Still smiling, he cut her off: "We won't start today. Get some rest, sweetling, you'll need it."

Sansa was incredibly tired and all she really wanted was to nod, curl up in a corner and sleep, but she felt obliged to reply: "No, I'm fine."

"Fine?" he repeated, a touch of sarcasm in his voice, then he sighed and placed a hand on her shoulder. "For how long were you in that cell, Sansa?"

"Almost six months," she replied reluctantly. "Well, I wasn't always _in_ the room, I-"

A small smile twitched around his lips. It had something rather sad about it. "You were their prisoner for almost half a year and now you're _fine?_ I don't think so." Again he sighed. "Get some rest."

"Mr Baelish-"

"Alright, and you need to stop calling me that. It sounds like I am your teacher."

Sansa frowned. "Well, aren't you…?"

"No," he cut her off sharply, his fingers gripping her shoulder firmer. "I am not. You have to understand this, Sansa – I am not your teacher and this is not school. This is the real world, and if you mess up, it will not result in bad grades. It may, in fact, result in your head forever parting ways with the rest of your body. Did I make myself clear?"

For a moment, Sansa couldn't muster any reply at all. She had to look very stupid to him in that moment, she thought, transfixed, like a deer caught in the headlights. She'd known the Lannisters were dangerous, that her family's doing hadn't always been legal; but he made it sound like every decision she made, no matter how trivial, was a life-or-death thing.

Then she asked, because she didn't know how to reply in a serious manner: "So, what should I call you instead? _O captain, my captain?_ "

"I'll still have some respect, please," he said quietly, his voice stern, but she could have sworn there was a hint of a smirk on his lips. "You'll call me Petyr, that's my name after all. And now _rest some._ "

His voice was low, level but firm, and it sounded like an order.

Sansa supressed the urge to salute and nodded. "Thank you. Petyr."

The smile that appeared on his lips now could not be called anything but cynic. His grey-green eyes pierced her for a moment and he replied, with a strange edge to his voice: "Don't thank me yet, dear. You don't know what you signed up for."

With that, he left. For a while, Sansa just sat there at the edge of the big bed and stared into empty space. Then she got up and inspected the wardrobe. Everything was her size, _everything,_ even the bras; but what really made her shudder was the fact she _liked_ every single piece of clothing she found, she would have bought all that herself. Well, once she would have. Now, she would have stood in front of the shop window, gazing longingly at the pretty clothes, knowing she'd never find the courage to wear them anyway. Her life at the Lannisters had lost her all her self-confidence.

She ran her hand over an expensive black leather jacket and her blood ran cold at how much this man seemed to know about her. Things that he _could impossibly know._

Who was that man? She had heard the name Petyr Baelish before, somewhere, she knew it…

Only when she crawled into the big bed half an hour later it occurred to her that she could have just run away. It would have been so easy… but then again, Baelish must have thought of that too, and he clearly hadn't been very concerned about it. She wondered if he thought the Lannisters would have found her, or if he was that confident that he would find her himself.

There in the dark, she was starting to wonder which of them was more dangerous – the Lannisters had been cruel and careless, mad at times, but at least she'd _known_ them. There was nothing she knew about the man still pacing in the adjoining room. She pulled the blanket over her head, but the sudden cold inside her wouldn't go away.

 _What if I've made a mistake? What if I've made a terrible, terrible mistake?_

* * *

When she woke up the next morning, there was a fine ray of light from underneath the door even though it still seemed to be dark outside. For a long while, she had no idea where she was; then she was convinced it had all been a dream. In a moment, she would wake up to the creaking of her cell door when someone came with the breakfast – or, though she didn't even dare to hope it, maybe she would be woken by her mother's voice with Arya stretching and yawning across the room.

But she didn't wake up.

Sansa sighed and buried her face in the soft linen of the pillow, letting it swallow her tears.

When she heard soft footsteps outside her door, she sat up abruptly and wiped her cheeks dry, clutching the blanket to her chest. The clock on the bedside drawer read ten to six.

She wondered what the hell Baelish was doing at this ungodly hour – when she'd gone to sleep, midnight had long gone and there'd still been light at the other side of the door. Had he even slept at all?

With another deep sigh, she crawled out of bed and opened the wardrobe, looking for something nondescript, plain, a jeans perhaps. But all she found was form-fitting and far too enticing for her taste – Baelish's looks had been bad enough the previous day. In the end, she opted for soft black leather pants and a thin grey pullover that at least was long enough to cover her hips and backside, or so she tried to tell herself. She tied her hair back into a ponytail and slowly opened the door, nervously tugging at the sleeves of the pullover.

Baelish sat at the kitchen table, a steaming cup in front of him, and cleaned a silver item with a small brown cloth. He looked up when he heard her door open and threw her a fleeting, hollow smile. "Cuppa tea?"

"Please."

He wrapped whatever he was polishing into the cloth, got to his feet and took a cup out of kitchen cupboard. "Sit down. Toast? Eggs?"

"I'm not hungry," she muttered, staring at the table top.

He sighed and turned back towards her for a moment. "You haven't eaten a bite in the last, what, sixteen hours? Don't think to starve yourself to death, sweetling, I won't let you."

Sansa returned his cold look and found it surprisingly easy – she'd expected him to be angry, but he just looked very tired.

Then a smile flickered across his features for just a second, then he turned back to the stove with a shrug. "Eggs, then. I think I've run out of jam anyway."

"Really, you don't have to-"

"I'm not going to poison you, Sansa," he cut her off quietly, an amused tone in his voice. "If I'd wanted to do you any harm, I would've just left you with them, wouldn't I?"

She stared at the table top, wondering what he wanted to hear. Cersei would have wanted her to agree, she knew, but with this man she wasn't too sure.

"Some people want to hurt their victims themselves," she muttered, almost too quietly to hear, and to her surprise, Baelish smiled.

"Impressive, you learned something from _Joffrey_. But don't worry, I'm the kind of person who likes to keep their hands clean – only Cersei never lets me."

"What do you mean?" she asked softly, shivering. If Cersei wanted to get rid of her, this was the perfect opportunity – _she_ liked to keep her hands clean as well, and this way, she would be able to deny all connection to her fate.

Baelish grimaced. "Not while you eat, love."

Sansa frowned at him, but he said no more. He piled the frying pan full of eggs onto a plate and placed it in front of her with the tea cup, then sat down opposite her and watched her very calmly.

"I'm sorry I scare you, sweetling," he said with a mocking little smile. "I usually keep people in line with bribes, but I've got a feeling that won't work with you, so…"

Sansa had to laugh against her better judgement. "How kind of you to apologise."

He smirked and shoved the plate towards her. " _Eat._ "

Sighing, she picked up the fork and did as he asked. It lacked salt, but she knew better than to complain. His tea was stronger than she liked her coffee.

"Could I get some milk?"

"Try the fridge," he said in an off-handed voice and reached across the table for the object bundled up in the cloth. "Though I suggest you see if it's still good first, it might've been in there for a while."

She sniffed at the half-emptied milk can, shrugged and filled her cup up until it almost overflowed.

"Now it'll be cold," he commented drily and carefully took off the cloth to reveal a knife with a blade as long as his hand.

Sansa stared at it for a moment, shocked, then hastily tore her eyes away. For God's sake, most people she knew had been armed somehow, even her _father_ had carried a gun, so had her brother Robb. A little knife shouldn't really come as a shock.

While she ate, he rubbed over the blade until it shone like silver, then started to balance the knife on his fingers. After a while, he put the cloth down, tipped his chair back and flung the knife across the room where it hit a board on the wall with a loud thump. Sansa flinched violently and almost dropped her fork.

Baelish gave an annoyed sigh, but his eyes weren't on her but on the quivering knife. "Sorry," he muttered distractedly, got to his feet and walked over to inspect the board closer. Sansa followed his eyes and saw the wood was heavily dented – clearly he'd put it up as some kind of target. Just off the point where the blade had sunk into the wood, there was a black dot painted onto the board.

He shook his head, pulled the knife out, returned to the table and tried again.

"What are you doing?"

He got up and eyed the board again, the look on his face even more annoyed than before.

"Either I'm out of training or it's out of balance." Again he wrenched the blade free from the wood and balanced it on his finger. "Favour the latter."

"But you almost hit it," Sansa protested faintly, starting to realise just _how_ dangerous this man might be. Maybe he wasn't very strong, but that clearly didn't stop him from being just as lethal as Cersei's other henchmen.

"I _missed_." He got a key out of a drawer, unlocked a small cupboard near the TV and got out another knife. This one hit.

With a small smile, he pocketed it and sat down opposite her again. "You can keep that one," he said, nodding towards the knife that had failed his test. "Piece of advice, _don't_ try to kill me with it. You'll cut your pretty little fingers off before you manage to draw a drop of my blood."

"Who are you?" Sansa whispered, not touching the weapon on the table. He was right – she had no idea how to handle it.

"In the Lannisters' eyes? The useful, expendable son of a nobody."

"Why did you get me out? You work for them."

"They'd kill me if I didn't. I'm no friend of theirs, though, sweetling, just smart enough to pretend I was."

"Still, why risk your reputation with them for me? You don't know me." She was overstepping her boundaries with that question, but she had to know. She had to know what this man wanted with her, why he was looking at her like that, why he seemed to _trust_ her for some reason even though he didn't know her.

He smiled, a tired, strange smile. "I knew your mother, when we were young. You look very much like her, did you know that?"

"So you're doing this for her?" she asked tentatively.

"No, sweetling," he said very softly, his voice husky and his eyes bright like the steel of his knifes. "For me."

With that, he got up and disappeared through one of the doors, his steps hardly making any sound on the wooden floorboards.

* * *

"I'm heading out," he announced an hour later, entering her room without knocking. "I put a couple of books on the table. Try to memorise what you can."

She nodded, a little confused.

"Any preferences for dinner?"

"No."

He sighed. "Your survival instinct _should_ cover regular meals, you know?" When she didn't reply, he shook his head and turned to leave. "I'll be back in a few hours. I'm sorry but," he turned around for a moment and threw her a smile that said _sorry, not sorry_ very plainly, "I'm afraid I'll have to lock you in. I mean, you could try the window, but unless you've had some good training I wouldn't recommend it. Third floor is a long way to fall."

 _Ass,_ she thought and forced a smile on her lips. "I'll have a look at the books."

His mocking little grin played around his lips and she had the eerie feeling he'd heard what she'd been thinking. "Good girl."

As soon as his steps had faded and the key turned in the lock of the front door, Sansa got up to have a look at the books he'd mentioned. It wasn't just obedience – though she supposed obedience was a good idea around Baelish from what she'd seen this morning – she was starting to get bored.

What she found was a book full of pictures of the human anatomy with some handwritten side notes and what looked to be a physics textbook.

She frowned and filed through the pages of the schoolbooks, looking for something hidden somewhere, but they proved to be just that – genuine textbooks, one for university students, one for someone in an advanced physics class.

Leverage, formulas for calculating movements of different objects, calculating velocity and acceleration…

She had no idea what the hell he was trying to tell her.

So she sat down with a shrug and decided to start with the physics book – she could remember her lessons at school, though only faintly, so this seemed a sensible starting point to her.

It proved to be just as complicated as she remembered, but she had to hand it to him – he'd picked a better book than her old teachers. It was hard, but she understood most of it, even though she had the feeling she would have forgotten half of it in a few hours.

Something about that anatomy book scared her half to death, though – the notes in that small, neat handwriting that mostly consisted of a single word, written along arteries and across organs, each with a measurement that she identified after a moment as the average distance between the organ in question and the skin.

 _vital_

"Good God," she muttered, running her fingers along a drawing of the human arm, and stared at the note written next to the wrist, very small in pencil, faded a little.

 _Blood loss severe, but not fatal_

She shuddered and threw the book shut. The knife he'd left on the kitchen table gleamed in the light.

 _"He's offered to teach you,"_ she heard Cersei say, and swallowed heavily. Yes, this was what it was.

When Cersei had threatened to kill him, Baelish had only asked " _Who would you send after_ me _?_ ".

It all made sense now.

Anatomy and physics. Anatomy for knowing what to aim for, physics to calculate the hit.

Fear to keep her in line, and mind games to get her used to scheming and lying.

And no way out.

Except perhaps to become so good she could kill them all.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to steady herself. There had to be another way, there _had_ to be.

All she had to do was find it.

* * *

When Baelish came back, Sansa had covered two chapters of the physics book and had made a list of all the organs that he'd marked with his foreboding side note.

 _A good girl remembers her manners,_ she told herself firmly and threw him a smile. "Hi."

Baelish frowned a little, but returned her smile nonetheless, effortlessly and a little insincere as always.

It seemed a rather good strategy, Sansa decided. For now, she had no idea how she was supposed to get out of this, so she had best play along until she came up with something. She couldn't risk angering a bloody _assassin,_ now, could she?

He glanced over her notes, threw her a lazy smile and unceremoniously dumped a white plastic bag on the kitchen counter. "I brought dinner."

"Great," she muttered, desperately trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. She failed. _Stupid._

 _Remember your manners._

"Oh, for Heaven's sake, is life with you always this cheerful?" he gave back, his voice dripping with sarcasm as well. "How did you like the books?"

A thousand possible answers sprang to her mind, amongst them sentences like _Please, please, PLEASE don't kill me._ In the end, she opted for a lame: "Surprisingly self-explanatory."

Baelish raised a brow at her. "Really? Well, if you find them too easy, don't hold back. There's a whole shelf of stuff like that over there."

She cast her eyes down, finding no way to reply. "What's for dinner?" Her voice sounded meek.

"Pizza," he gave back, looking a little confused about her sudden change of behaviour. "I'm original like that."

"Sounds good," she murmured, still fixing the table top.

He leaned against the kitchen counter with a sigh and eyed her very closely, then said in an almost kind tone: "Looks like the penny dropped, then."

She bit her lip and replied softly: "Was there no way to break it to me a little more gently?"

His smile turned bitter. "Oh, this _was_ gentle, sweetling." He turned to the kitchen and poured two glasses of water. "This isn't really the kind of business where you introduce people slowly. We were all blackmailed into it, really. I did try not to throw you in at the deep end, dear, but that's the way it works."

"What do you mean, _we were all blackmailed into it_?" Sansa asked softly.

"Well, it's true," he said with a shrug. "Most people just find themselves in a huge lot of trouble with people like the Lannisters one day and all they ask you is how far you would go to save your own hide."

Sansa eyed him cautiously and noticed he'd suddenly stopped to look her in the eye. "How old were you?"

"Hardly twenty, and pretty eager to live." His grin seemed to come a lot less easy this time.

For a while, Sansa was stunned silent, then she asked tentatively: "But if they trained you… who's to say you wouldn't kill them first? Get out? Once you're good enough?"

He smirked, but it looked rather humourless. "Well, that's the trick, you see? You train a killer to do your dirty work, but then you need to train another to keep the first one in check; and he needs to be equally good, if not better, to make it all work. And then you need another one for the second one and so on and so forth…" He waved a hand and added drily: "Unless of course you have a brutish braindead like Gregor Clegane who does the whole thing for sport and doesn't need to be kept in check."

Sansa shivered. She'd only seen Gregor Clegane once, from afar, but it had been more than enough.

"So he's… he's the one they'd sent after their own people?"

"Who they send is a question of what they're aiming for. If they need someone out of the way, clean and quick, they'd probably send me. Gregor's hits are meant to send a message…"

He opened the pizza box, seemed to realise it had gone cold and bent down to heat the oven. "I doubt they'd send Gregor for me, really… and who knows, he's pretty stupid, I might survive him. Only very barely, obviously, and I'd say the chances would be slim at best, but I might." He shoved the pizza into the oven and sat down across the table. "They'd send his brother for me, I think," he added calmly. "And _he'_ d do me in."

 _Sandor Clegane._ Joffrey's man for, well, everything. He'd accompanied Sansa a few times whenever Cersei or Joffrey wanted her to be somewhere, a few nights he'd even stood vigil outside her door. He sure was a frightening sight, with the huge burn that covered half his face, tall and muscular. There was always a gun strapped to his hip, but she didn't really think he would even need it – Sandor was strong enough to use whatever fell into his hands as a weapon.

"Why are you so sure of that?"

He chuckled and gave the knife on the table a spin. "There's a reason people call him the Hound, sweetling," he said, watching the rotating weapon, "he enjoys the hunt, and no matter for how long or how far you run away from him, someday he'll find you. His brother might get bored, but Sandor wouldn't give up." He threw her another of his empty smiles. "But you've learned already not to mess with him, haven't you?"

She thought of that one time he'd come into her cell, his shirt dirty and an almost empty bottle of vodka in his hand, and nodded. "Yeah. I know."

She hesitated for a moment, then asked softly: "I can't decline the offer, can I?"

Baelish emptied his glass and Sansa noticed he held it like a liquor glass even though there was only water in it. "Not unless you have a dying wish."

She swallowed, staring at the knife herself, and nodded. "What if… what if I'm not good enough? If I just can't do it?"

For a moment, she thought she'd seen a glimpse of something in his eyes, but it had probably just been a trick of the light. "You have to."

"Yeah, but what if I _can't_?"

He seemed to think on that for a moment, then he answered very quietly: "Trust me, ask the right question… and almost anyone can do almost anything."

Her throat was tight and she desperately wanted to cry, but no tears came, and when she spoke, her voice just sounded dead to her own ears. "What would that question be?"

His eyes had returned to her face, and the look in them had turned very cold. There was a smile on his lips, but it only made him look more bitter, and she couldn't decide whether it all was just another act or if he really was like this – if he really was this broken.

"It's always the same question, sweetling," he answered, his voice as cold and empty as his steely green eyes. " _Them or you?_ "

* * *

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